


Close the Door.  Were You Born in a Barn?

by Waldo



Series: NCIS LA: Motherly Advice [1]
Category: NCIS: Los Angeles
Genre: Bad Puns, Case Fic, Community: ncisdaily, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-11
Updated: 2010-03-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 21:51:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waldo/pseuds/Waldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Honest to Goodness Radioactivity terms:  <br/><b>Milk</b>: To elute a cow.<br/><b>Elute</b>: To separate by washing (to milk).<br/><b>Cow</b>: A radioisotope generator system.</p><p>G wants to know why Sam knows this.  And how it applies to their current case.  And if the farmer with radioactive animals will foster Sam's Chernobyl-esque frog-swan-duck thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close the Door.  Were You Born in a Barn?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for NCISDaily's March 11th prompt - animals.
> 
> The terms are real (see: http://www.lbl.gov/abc/Glossary.html), the extremely bad puns are all mine and offer apologies for them up front.

"Close the door," Sam hissed. "What? Were you born in one of these?"

G took a look around the barn they'd ducked into. "Very possibly," he answered quietly as they began their search. When Sam gave him an odd look he added, "It would explain why I have no birth certificate."

Sam laughed a little under his breath. He laughed harder as a goat, who seemed quite unfazed by their intrusion began to back G up against a stack of bags of chicken feed. He almost choked trying to keep himself quiet as G's hand went towards his gun and he met the goat's eyes and said, "Stop right there. Federal Agent."

&lt;{*}&gt;

G and Sam had been on one side of the operations center in a conference call with the SecNav and Director Vance. They were approaching the three-hour mark of trying to weigh the pros and cons of causing widespread panic.

Eric was on the other side coordinating satellite information as they attempted to locate their target technology.

G had been a little less than politic when they heard what their newest case was.

"Define 'small nuclear device'," He'd said to Vance. "And while we're at it, define, 'minor radiation leak'."

Vance had explained that it was part of a device scheduled to be delivered to a new sub prototype and that that part happened to contain the actual plutonium and that the one member of the theft ring they'd caught was currently being held in a decontamination room somewhere in San Diego.

So now they were debating whether or not they should put out a public call for information on the damn thing to get it found, or if they'd be better off keeping a lid on it, finding it and, essentially, stealing it back.

They'd ultimately decided on plan B, which made it an OSP problem instead of a San Diego problem.

Twenty minutes after G and Sam's call was over, Eric declared that he was 'pretty sure' he'd narrowed down the signal to a two mile area. That was the bad news. The good news was that most of that area was farm fields a little under a hundred miles outside of of L.A. With a device that was too large for one person to move easily on their own, but small enough to fit in the trunk of a large car or in the back of pick-up truck, so they figured it was likely in one of the dozen or so buildings in that area.

Leaving Hetty, Eric and Kensi to set up the Hazmat team as well the cover story, they'd driven out with Geiger-counters to find the damn thing.

&lt;{*}&gt;

So there they were sneaking around farm buildings, hoping to avoid pissing off the local agriculturalists and hoping to find something that had the potential to make them glow in the dark. It was their fifth building and it was getting near sundown and they were both a little punchy.

Sam was sweeping a stack of wooden boards and watching as G tried not to trip over the free-range chickens. "If we find that thing in here, we're going to have to find out how the hell you decontaminate a chicken. Or a…" he peered into a stall and was greeted with a set of very large, yellow teeth and a brown eye that was about half the size of his fist looking over the half-door back at him. Sam took a step back, waving the stench of horse-breath out of his face. "Or Mr. Ed here."

"Yeah, because that's just what the world needs. Mutant livestock. Two-headed goats that can eat both my shirt and my pants at the same time." G carefully shoved a rooster to one side with his foot as he examined a pile of saddle blankets. The rooster didn't appreciate it and came back to peck at his shoelaces. "Shoo, before I start Googling recipes for Buffalo wings," he said to it. Then to Sam, "This is insane."

"What would you call it if Bossie over there," Sam pointed to one of several cows in the large holding area at the far end of the barn, "became radioactive?"

"I don't think I want to know," G said as he continued to sweep his counter.

"Moo-cle-ar warfare."

"And I thought these animals stunk," G groaned.

"Actually, 'cow' is a radiation term." Sam said as he checked through an empty stall.

"It is not," G responded.

"It is. It's a system that generates radioisotopes. You can even milk this cow."

"You're making this up," G told him, leaving no room for argument.

"I'm not, if you elute a cow, you milk it."

"I'm pretty sure we stopped speaking the same language somewhere along the line." G shoved another goat back before it could get ahold of his shirt.

"You elute the cow – separate the… damn, I forget… separate something by washing…something."

"I think you were eluted in the head," G said having no idea if that was possible, but not really caring. "Hey, you know, if we do find it here, and these animals are on their way to glowing in the dark, we could try and get the farmer to adopt your Chernobyl-esque frog-swan-duck thing. He'd fit in perfectly here."

Sam wondered if he could find an egg lying around to throw at G.

They searched silently for a few more minutes before Sam spoke up again. "What would you call it if it was the pigs we saw outside that were dosed?"

"Pre-cooked bacon?" G guessed.

"Radio-pork-tive."

G didn't even give that one a courtesy grunt. He also decided that there was some logic to the old adage, 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' And it beat Sam trying to explain that there were really radioactive cows giving radioactive milk somewhere. "What if one of these chickens that got nuked?"

Sam shrugged as he held the detector end of his counter into the cow's pen and hoped it would detect anything that might be in that hay pile against the far wall.

"You'd get a chicken with eggs-ray vision."

Sam laughed. "Not bad. What if it's one of those tabbies running around?"

"Nuclear Cat-astrophe?" G guessed. Sam gave him a thumbs-up. "The horse should actually be fine," G added.

"Why's that?" Sam asked, sounding like he was expecting a serious answer.

"Because he's stable-ized."

Sam wasn't going to let him get away with that so he countered with "How long is a baby cow radioactive?"

"Baby cow?"

"Depends on the radiation's calf-life." Sam told him, laughing at his own joke until his Geiger-counter went nuts. "Oh hell," he said, staring at the read-out.

G ran over, almost slipping on the loose hay on the floor, until Sam waved him back.

"Time to tell Eric to send in the cavalry."

"Cavalry, horse joke, I get it," G said distractedly as they both backed slowly out of the barn and G pulled his phone out and called Eric for Hazmat.

"How far away do we need to be to be safe?" Sam asked as they headed for the car. "Because one public decontamination shower for the year, is more than enough."

"I hear that," G said as they continued to move to what they hoped was a safe distance.


End file.
